I like the idea of allowing line height to depend on either
font size or text block width, as you suggest in a recent
e-mail. Notice that this may be the only way to create paragraphs
of text that, like a traditional book, have the same line-to-line
leading BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS as within paragraphs. Currently, most
browsers add an extra line of space.
Using CSS, I would love to be able to specify the top-margin as
equal to the line-height. But I can't currently do that in a
PERCENTAGE-based (i.e. non-absolute) system, because the percent
attribute (currently) relies on text body WIDTH, not LINE-HEIGHT.
It seems to me that currently the only way to "typeset" according
to traditional book specifications on the web -- in other words,
to have inter-paragraph spacing match inter-linear spacing -- is
to use negative absolute values of margin-top. This completely makes
a design depend on absolute values of font size and so forth that
seems to defeat the purpose of being resolution and platform
independent.
~c dsr@w3.orgfahrner@pobox.comwww-style@w3.orgjenny@w3.org
Hope I cc'd this correctly.
William I. Johnston
Watertown, MA USA
mailto:wij@world.std.comhttp://world.std.com/%7Ewij/